It was here, our first big event !
Saturday night, we were ready, we had enough staff to keep the whole valley served, but where were the people, the customers ?
We had after four weeks customers who had already become regulars, they were in but no more strangers. I hate seeing staff I am paying for standing around, but they had nothing to do. Slowly we let them one by one leave, still no 900 people filling their boots for a big hike tomorrow.
Ok we just had to accept it and hope tomorrow would be better.
Sunday I am flapping like a broken arm in the wind, yesterday hadn't boded well for today.
My heart sank when the paella arrived, brilliant free food, when we have 500 burgers for sale, luckily we hadn't started to cook them yet, we would pre-cook a smaller amount and keep them hot and do more as and when.
Again, have a shed full of staff, hanging around. Please God, we really need this to go well.
The 900 people did turn up and they did keep us busy for the whole hour they were there.
We did sell some burgers, about 70 out of 500, oh, pants !
Water we sold a grand total of 3 bottles all day and two of them weren't for the walkers.
I felt so sorry for the delivery man, as he packed the cases back into the truck. I felt so sorry for him I helped and we kept a load more than we needed, as we figured we would sell it in the end, which of course we did.
Although we had expected more, we gained hugely on this event. Mainly we knew we could do it, the town hall saw we could do it and we wouldn't need to buy burgers, rolls or water for a long time.
Now where do you put all the burgers and rolls? Basically every staff member with a freezer was sent home with as much as they could fit in their freezers to store for us. Then we moved onto the customers, that amount of food takes up a hell of a lot of space.
We had employed a 28 year old expat lady, for the event, she was looking for more permeant work. She was fairly pretty and had assets that I just don't have, if you know what I mean ! She spoke fluent Spanish and had proven to be a good barmaid.
Joe had been loyal and trustworthy, however we all, him included, were finding the travel arrangements difficult, also he sometimes found the Maths hard work. Some of our male customers objected to having two men behind the bar. We all sat down and agreed he would better if he found work closer to home, he had had a few interviews for garages (remember he was a trained mechanic). As luck would have it he was offered a job the very next day.
We took Gwen (name changed, but she is Scottish) on. That would turn out to be both fantastic and a total nightmare.
Are we all doomed ...........????
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